Airtel, which upgraded all postpaid customers to priority plans, argued that the service did not throttle or degrade the experience for its prepaid customers, forming the majority of its 368 million customers in the country.
Airtel Xstream will allow its subscribers to access live TV, video, music, news and sports on an over-the-top smart stick, interned-enabled set top box, and handheld devices.
Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL) has written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) stating that a recent complaint against it by Bharti Airtel is a deliberate, malicious attempt at defaming RJIL's consumer-friendly tariff. RJIL has also asked the regulator to warn Airtel against 'making such frivolous complaints in the future'. The move is in response to Airtel recently requesting Trai to bring content aired through broadband under the regulatory fold and keep a check against discriminatory bundling tactics.
Shares of telecom services providers - Reliance Industries (parent of Reliance Jio), Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea - have shed up to 23 per cent so far in the current calendar year as growth in the wireless subscriber segment begins to plateau amid higher tariffs and rising costs of smartphones. By comparison, the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex, and sectoral index BSE Telecom have dipped 1.8 per cent, and 12.6 per cent, respectively, ACE Equity data shows. However, analysts expect the trend to reverse soon as telecom services providers focus on the next leg of growth -- fixed broadband (FBB) segment.
Analysts say that Jio's substantial slowing down in net additions is possibly because the company has dramatically reduced its bundled 4G feature phone offering, which contributed an average 30-40 per cent of its net additions.
Company has already reached out to its customers and employees
The DoT report is expected by the end of the month.
VoIP services include communications applications such as Skype, Line and Viber
The recognition that content - video in particular - will be the next big thing in the telecom wars requires no rocket science.
While the investment amount could not be immediately ascertained, a report pegged it at about $2 billion.
VIL has countered Trai's contention that the RedX plan, which commits higher speeds, should have been informed separately so different aspects could have been examined before such service was launched.
Vodafone and Bharti have pointed out that, for data, their revenue realisation should be at Rs 30-35 per GB for them to cover their costs as opposed to the current figure of over Rs 11 per GB. But Jio has suggested a gradual increase to Rs 15 per GB and then maybe to Rs 20 per GB after six to nine months.
Its success script: Investing more in local content ecosystem; growing its partnership footprint.
A DoT panel has backed net neutrality and made some recommendations to push the cause
It has suggested OTTs be subject to the same security requirements that a traditional TSP has to adhere to.
While Reliance has the clout to negotiate prices with suppliers for its e-commerce, not to forget the cost advantage of integrated warehouse and supply chains, Amazon and Walmart are no pushovers, they too have deep pockets.
DD Freedish is the 'largest TV platform in India', going to 58 million homes, featuring 70-odd private channels. DD Freedish reaches about 278 million people, and is easily among the top five TV platforms in the world.
A government panel on Net neutrality has proposed to regulate domestic calls made using Internet-based calling applications such as Skype, WhatsApp and Viber at par with phone call services offered by telecom operators.
TRAI seeks views to regulate net-based calling, messaging apps
Feedback from telecom members indicated a 10 per cent increase in traffic, but no fears of choked networks. Telcos currently use 65-70 per cent of the network capacity. In other words, they have enough additional capacity to handle the new pressure without clogging the system.
95 per cent of advertising inventory has been sold on television and 18 on-air sponsors have been signed up so far, the highest for any season.
Netflix and Prime have decided that rather than only buying the rights to Bollywood blockbusters to expand their reach in India, producing original content would be a better idea.
Small and big advertisers are making their presence felt this year far more than they did earlier, bringing a smile to the faces of the tournament's organisers and partners.
Bharti Airtel had planned to charge separately for internet-based voice calls provided by Skype.
Cheap data plans, affordable handsets, increasing popularity of video services and 4G networks have helped average data consumption per user in India to grow to over 11 GB a month, telecom gear maker Nokia said on Thursday. Nokia -- in its annual Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index (MBiT) report -- said the overall data traffic in India increased by 47 per cent in 2019, driven by continued 4G consumption. 4G data constitute 96 per cent of the total data traffic consumed across the country, while 3G data traffic registered its highest ever decline of 30 per cent, it added.
Homegrown chat application Hike messenger on Wednesday said it will offer free voice calls to its users over 2G, 3G and wi-fi services across the globe in over 200 countries.
Rediff.com gives you a lowdown on the net neutrality issue that is today part of the national discourse.
With a string of deals with telecom service providers, DTH operators and Bollywood stars, Netflix goes all out to protect its turf in India and fend off competition, says Viveat Pinto.
Transcript of Nikhil Pahwa's chat with Rediff readers.
Internet-based systemic wisdom connects machines and people, and will drive next-gen enterprises, said Huawei's Yatish Nagavalli.
